Background

The Gazetteer grew out of Prod Floyd’s 2004-06 research at Heriot-Watt University (Floyd 2006: Public Heraldry and the Built Heritage: condition, location and conservation of heraldic panels in Scotland. MSc Dissertation, Heriot-Watt University). It also builds on earlier work from more than 20 years ago by Bill Adams (Historic Scotland), James Pettigrew and Leslie Hodgson (both Heraldry Society of Scotland). Recent data from a similar project from 2019 onwards by Dr Caroline Scott, recording only the coats of arms of and in the City of Glasgow, has also proved useful in locating the more dispersed or isolated examples of the city’s arms.

Structure

The Gazetteer consists of a spreadsheet with the country divided into the old pre-1975 historic counties, as the vast majority of Scottish public heraldry relates to that time frame. The spreadsheet acts as an index to the database and allows a quick check as to what is already recorded. This is accompanied by County folders with images, maps and tabular data for each locality. The Counties are given 3-letter prefix codes (e.g. ABN = Aberdeenshire). However, the two major cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh are given their own 3-letter prefix codes (GLA and EDI respectively).

The main numbered localities within each county/city consist of individual buildings, graveyards etc (e.g ABN_0001, 0002 etc) with each window, memorial etc at the same locality given a secondary number, (e.g. ABN_0001.01, 0001.02, 0001.03 etc). Extra suffix letters are used for the rare occasions where there are several shields within, for example, a single window or panel (e.g. ABN_0001.01a, 0001.01b). This means that it is possible to give every individual shield a unique code without it being too cumbersome.

The future

Much of the material already in the Gazetteer records armorial panels which either pre-date the Public Register, have never been matriculated or show unrecorded differences. As the Gazetteer is searchable on key words and location (via a map), it allows heraldists to locate armorial panels in unusual locations and make family connections which otherwise would be almost impossible. The Gazetteer will have blazons for the shields, crests, supporters and mottos and will hopefully also make people more aware of the wealth of armorial panels in Scotland and encourage interest in our heraldic heritage. It is intended that interested heraldists will be able to submit images and data from examples of heraldry not yet included in the Gazetteer and submit corrections and amendments to the existing data.

Support for the Gazetteer from the St Andrews Fund for Scots Heraldry, the Heraldry Society of Scotland and the Lord Lyon Society is gratefully acknowledged.

The content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0

Join us today

We welcome all new supporters of the Society to celebrate our Scots heritage through heraldry and the collection of records held in the Office of the Court of the Lord Lyon.

MEMBERSHIP